Overpopulation on Earth and a severe lack of resources led to a global crisis without precedents in the history of mankind.
It all has come to a critical point.
In order to keep our species alive, the Global Union of Nations launched the Space Colonization Program, which involved the latest spaceship technology ever conceived.
The S.T.A.R. 1088 Harvester Spaceship was part of the project.
However, its fate becomes compromised when something hits one of the engines, rendering the whole spaceship inoperational and out of control, floating adrift in the unknown deep space.
Stuck in the middle of our never ending universe, it's time to send a signal in hopes help arrives...

Hi everyone!

First off I'd like to give a special mention to "I.M.Meen", another member of this site, who along with many other contributors (Directly or indirectly) are helping this mod be a far better experience. Second, and again, I'd like to give my thanks to "Kyle_K_ski" for his contributions towards this project.

Now I would like to express something that's been worrying me a bit last weeks. By the end of the month I'm starting my studies again, and due to important real life concerns I will not, alas, be able to continue working as fluently as I've been doing last year and during my holidays. It's a must I communicate the small amount of "followers" this mod has gained so far, that production will start going SLOWER. So PLEASE, I beg you be patient. I hope you can comprehend this situation.

Besides, I also worked on the mod a lot last week. These days I've been learning 3D animations. I'm working to get all weapons re-animated. Up until now there's only the pistol and the shotgun, but if time permits, I intend to animate all of them.

You can click to view full sized

But I haven't talked about the inventory yet. For this reason I'll write up a very short summary of what is being done to the weapons. Notice I said a thousand times that I don't like to explain many things before the release date, but since this is somehow a "developer diary" I have to let you know about certain things while keeping others secret. All weapons will now act a bit more realistically. I'll use the two mentioned as examples. The pistol can perform both empty and normal reloads. If there are no rounds left in the magazine the slide will remain back and the round will be sent up to the barrel only once the slide release is pushed after the reload action is finished. A similar principle applies for the shotgun. There are also additional animations. In this mod every weapon in your inventory is unique and valuable as well. This means that even having stronger equipment you'll still be using all of them for different situations. This is due to the "pros and cons" they have, where weight, attachments, muzzle velocity, round caliber and type, and many other factors combine.

As I wrote above, there are some animations on the way.Please let me know what you think of them! I'm doing all that I can, it's something that takes a lot of time, and they're also my first 3D animations ever, as I learnt while doing them.

Note that I don't like to upload videos very often.

I rely on screenshots because they let others create their own image of what is going on in a scene. As if we were reading a book, it activates your mind and lets you imagine things the way you want (until you finally try the product yourself) This, however, needs to be shown in motion. I intend not to spoil the mod, but I still want you to have an idea of what is going on with the project. This is most likely the reason these videos are all recorded in TESTMAPS and not actual game levels.

A great concept art image of how the ship would look like may be coming next time (Made by a contributor)

If you like/don't like what you see please let me know, so far there are a few members who are leaving very motivating comments which help me keeping this mod going. If you feel like lending me a hand, it's always very appreciated. If you'd like to see something into this mod, if it's into my knowledge I'll for sure try and do it. I'm open to suggestions. Otherwise, and as always, I hope you like what you see.

Emperor, the recording software seems to somehow alter the sound and decrease its quality quite a lot. The weapons sound very good indeed but you cannot trust this video sound-wise as again, its sound quality is very low.

As for the rest, I'm happy you guys are liking them and leaving your 2 cents telling me what you think of them.

Even though the weapon firing sounds are definitely realistic, they might have a bit of 'overpressure', as in too high pitched and too loud sound, which can cause temporary deafness for headphone users and damage to speakers. (Nah, just kidding)

But seriously though, I suggest lowering the volume/filtering out high frequencies and perhaps adding a little base for cinematic effects.

EDIT: As for handgun- Add a seperate reloading sound or segment for the slide locking so it's also audibly different for a little more immersion.

EDIT 2:

Handgun seems to slide out of position during the last few frames of the firing animation. Perhaps your hands or pistols aren't attached to eachother during these frames?

EDIT 3:

I also have some free to use HD realistic bullet impact sounds for those metal -DENT- sounds I keep hearing.

Might be me, but the thumb looks a little weird on the reloading sequence, try rotating it 'outbound and around' so that the nail is more facing the player, instead of you being able to look into the nail.

I mean, when I hold my handgun, I don't specifically strain my thumb to stay out of a relaxed position, muscle reflexes automatically hold it that way.

-Addition: Then again, it might just be the shape and size of the nail that's fooling me.

The gun sounds do not sound like that! My recorder alters the sound quality and all sounds sound extremely loud and high pitched. I'm sure that's because the input may not be correctly configured or something alike.
I'm extremely finicky when it comes to sounds. These also have a nice amount of bass, which appears to have been removed in the video. All in all, do not trust the sounds in my videos (this and future ones I may upload) as they certainly give a wrong depiction of how guns sound.

1- I'll definitely add a separate reload sound for both sequences.

2- Yes, I checked that out and it seems the body of the handgun "detaches" from its parent at the last 5 frames of the animation. They are attached one to each other (hand -> gun) but the body aquired a weird rotation there.
Fixing that...

The thumb, I really didn't notice any strange rotation until you mentioned it. I'll see if I can make it point more to the player and thus making it more natural.
However I'm not sure how it would look like, remember it's a game and certain over-realistic stuff could even make it look worse ;)

I wonder how big will be that ship and how it will look? :) I'm sure You will find way to make different environments there (laboratories, medical section, storage area, engineering, reactors, crew rooms, social rooms, operation deck - well You can even try do something more crazy like garden area with plants or area for water recycling, parts that look luxurious for high rank staff and recreation purposes, some Dead Space/Aliens/System Shock organic maze or caves if ship was hit by giant asteroid and player could have objective to set some explosives to detach it from ship). Since it's in space there could be some interesting segments that take place outside ship - maybe not totally in zero gravity but with bit weaker gravity that allow for higher jumps (and make sounds much lower and deaf) - think about parts where player need to walk on ship surface from one point to another one as fast as possible because there is no connection or it is locked, You can even make explosion and toss for that purpose player out of ship. There can be parts where glass is broken and You can not stand to long like on Mars surface, for example You can make emergency buttons to close windows if there is oxygen leak. Also water and electrical can create traps or if we have reactor there can be leaking radioactive goo :)

A concept artist is in the process of drawing the ship according to some data and specifications I gave him.
It is a big ship composed of different decks (medical, arboretum, engineering,comm central etc.)
So as you said, yes the garden area is actually an arboretum :)
Thanks for the input, but considering this is still work in progress I'd like to generate expectative and avoid giving out internal data such as objectives and places you'll go through in detail. In the space screenshot you can read "Warning decompression". I'll let you imagine the rest.
Your ideas are always taken into account.

I understood that and I do not want to spoil anything You are preparing to us :) . I believe that making stuff like this one is very hard and require lot of time and work to achieve level of detail You present in Your project. Maybe I just should send You email with my ideas about spaceships :)

Well, I haven't had the chance of playing System Shock.
As opposed to what it should be the standard, I haven't played a wide variation of game sagas.
My list is restricted mostly to iD games, say Wolfenstein, all Doom games, the Quake franchise.
And then Dead Space and luckily some others like the first F.E.A.R or Battlefield.
Then talk to me about any other AAA games and I may not have played them myself...

But the overall design is progressing fantastically good, I'm lucky the concept artist drawing it is a highly skilled individual, and has professional knowledge in the world of art.